Side: Yuki
"Come on, hang in there! You're the kind of guy who can do it if you try!"
"...No, that's impossible. The mana drain is way too fast."
I didn't want to hear weakness coming from Slakichi-san, one of the strongest members of Weed's monster army.
"Please accept reality, Yuki-san. Whether we classify them as pure magical organisms or standard monsters, creatures that rely on external mana are subjected to a relentless, aggressive siphon over here. Their physical structures simply cannot sustain themselves."
"Onii-chan, please send Slakichi back to Weed. He looks like he's in so much pain..."
Damn it. If Aslin says that, I don't really have a choice, do I?
"Alright, I'm counting on you back in Weed."
"Yeah. I'll manage over there."
Of course. Even our Demon King literally couldn't lay a hand on you there.
We watched as Slakichi-san disappeared into the ruins.
After that meeting, I had Seraria and the others confirm that Call still worked, and I had monsters sent here... but...
The results were catastrophic.
Any magical organism rated below Level 50—specifically entities that rely entirely on environmental mana to hold a physical form, such as slimes, ghosts, and gaseous or incorporeal lifeforms—suffered an instantaneous, massive drain on their core resources, causing them to literally dissolve into nothingness.
We immediately sent back any surviving magical lifeforms, then conducted experiments using the top-class Slakichi-san.
Even Slakichi-san could only remain active on this new continent for about three hours before reaching his limit.
"This means the fairies might be in danger too."
"Probably. Fairy race are primarily composed of mana, after all."
Phew. I am incredibly glad I didn't casually bring Narjia-san or Coville along on this trip.
"As you can see, that's the situation."
I muttered, gently resting my hand on the shoulder of the monster standing next to me.
"What exactly do you mean by 'as you can see' Boss!?"
"Well, you saw what happened to Slakichi-san, right? You're the only one who seems capable of taking command on-site right now."
"There are plenty of others, aren't there!? Why me-ssu!?"
"Well, the others would probably become objects of terror."
Due to the severe magical depletion crisis plaguing this new continent, the local monster population was phenomenally sparse.
While you might occasionally spot a stray Goblin if you venture deep into the forests, Orcs were apparently practically non-existent in this region. In fact, on this continent, a captured Orc was considered such a rare commodity that they were frequently sold off as exotic sideshow attractions for human entertainment.
Therefore, while our specialized Orc division was perfectly capable of manual labor, deploying them here would invite a massive avalanche of tedious public misunderstandings, so I chose to leave them benched.
Naturally, summoning high-tier magical entities like Dullahans was completely out of the question. As for Mino-chan from our Blood Minotaur vanguard—if I casually manifested a legendary-class calamity like him in this clearing, the neighboring human nations would probably form an immediate global coalition army just to hunt him down.
"So, yeah. Give it your best shot. Secure a functional defensive perimeter around this village within a week. I'm leaving the entire strategic blueprint completely up to your discretion."
"That is insanely cruel!! The deadline's too short! And you're dumping the entire defense plan on me-ssu!?"
"It's not like you lack the capacity to execute it. I've personally drilled an immense array of modern tactical principles into your head over the years. Oh, and just to reiterate: your primary objective is to guarantee the absolute safety of this village."
"I mean, sure, I can do it, but isn't there something wrong with this-ssu!?"
"I understand how you feel, but I've been dealing with all kinds of unreasonable crap too. Just accept your fate. This is a direct order from your supreme executive commander—look on the bright side, at least you have a concrete superior you can actively direct your resentment toward, right?"
"...Sorry about that, Boss."
"I'll make sure to add expeditionary pay on top of your salary."
"I'll do my best... And uh, Boss, you do your best too-ssu."
"If sympathy helps, switch places with me."
"No thanks. Well, I've got work to do, so I'm heading out!!"
Tch, he ran away.
Still, that should take care of the defense issue.
"What are your thoughts on our current setup, Zargis?"
"Let's see. The reinforcement units currently deployed belong to the Goblin division commanded by General Steve. However, to avoid triggering immediate panic among the local villagers, we have strictly capped their active presence to a little over fifty soldiers. If a full-scale imperial army launches a dedicated campaign against this position, holding the line with those numbers will be an incredibly steep uphill battle."
"The moment the Elder formally solidifies the village's consensus tomorrow, I'll fast-track a massive deployment of high-tier reinforcements. Frankly, if we didn't have to worry about shielding the civilian population, our only mandate would be defending the physical dungeon entrance itself. Against a standard, mundane army like the Jilva soldiers we encountered earlier, it wouldn't matter if they marched ten thousand men down on this clearing—they wouldn't stand a remote chance against us."
"Under normal military conventions, a tiny detachment would be effortlessly crushed under the sheer weight of numerical superiority... but standard common sense simply does not translate to Weed's professional army. While our intelligence regarding the new continent remains heavily restricted, we possess more than enough leverage to navigate any scenario. If an absolute worst-case variable manifests, we can always effortlessly execute a strategic retreat."
Exactly.
If we lacked even that baseline level of operational security, I would have packed up our bags and completely withdrawn from the new continent already. I have absolutely zero desire to die a pointless death, and the last thing I want to do is cause my wives unnecessary emotional distress.
"Still, being completely cut off from utilizing our automated dungeon administrative functions over here is an absolute pain."
"No, If anything, you have simply been thoroughly spoiled by how effortless the dungeon system made your life up until now."
While Zargis's critique was entirely accurate, constructing a flawless defensive perimeter with a grand total of only fifty active personnel was undeniably a grueling task.
"Steve will likely submit his formalized defensive blueprint by tomorrow morning. If push comes to shove, I suppose we can always secure this perimeter by deploying our stockpiles of modern firearms."
"Ah, you mean those terrifying, reality-defying ballistics from that alternate world... If you actively integrate those assets into our defensive layout, it would require a literal act of god for this perimeter to ever fall to an invader."
If our sole objective was pure defense, it would be a flawless solution.
However, modern firearms represent an incredibly volatile, difficult-to-manage form of cheat-tier weaponry. The massive deployment of tanks we utilized back during the crisis in Roumel was a perfect example—the sheer destructive presence of those vehicles ultimately left the individual who summoned them completely paralyzed in terms of political mobility. Handing out weapons that grant absolute lethality to literally anyone carries a severe risk of aggressively accelerating global warfare.
Because of that danger, our inventory management must be subjected to the absolute strictest administrative protocols.
Well, looking at Roumel's internal logistics, they clearly lacked the industrial capacity to independently mass-produce those munitions anyway. Consequently, they chose to keep the existence of their unique summoner, Tanaka, completely insulated from the public eye, treating him strictly as a hidden, ultimate strategic trump card.
I needed to manage our modern armaments with the exact same level of extreme discretion to ensure I didn't trigger a similar geopolitical mess. In my case, I could seamlessly manifest logistics on a whim utilizing my DP reserves, after all.
Ah, right—our recent magical experiments yielded an incredibly fascinating piece of data: items manifested directly through DP expenditure do not appear to be structurally composed of raw mana. Since they are genuine, physical objects materialized directly through Luna's divine administrative authority, their structural integrity is completely unaffected by the regional magical depletion crisis.
On a continent so thoroughly starved of mana, these physical armaments would boast an incomparable, absolute tactical superiority.
If a single one of these weapons were to be stolen, a localized disaster would be the best-case scenario. If a global superpower managed to reverse-engineer and independently mass-produce modern ballistics, this entire new continent would instantly devolve into a miniature, localized World War.
"The real puzzle is figuring out how to structure our inventory protocols over here..."
"Since we are completely cut off from utilizing the dungeon's automated search and surveillance arrays, we cannot rely on passive tracking. Our only viable option is to enforce a rigorous bureaucratic system: mandatory physical paperwork for deployment authorization, face-to-face inventory handovers, and absolute high-security locks on our storage vaults, correct?"
"Yeah, that's pretty much the bare minimum we'll have to enforce..."
At the end of the day, operating without the absolute cheat-tier convenience of a fully functional dungeon grid drastically inflates our overall operational risk. It really makes you appreciate how efficiently modern Earth managed its security systems—the sheer complexity of their technical protocols was honestly mind-boggling.
Unfortunately, I don't possess anywhere near the specialized engineering knowledge required to construct that level of digital architecture from scratch over here. Down the line, it might become a viable long-term project, but under our current circumstances, it was completely impossible.
Maybe I should establish a dedicated digital security division within Weed's scientific research department? No, that's completely unrealistic. Right now, Zargis's team has barely managed to master the basic physics required to illuminate a standard lightbulb using crude electrical currents.
Even I only possessed a thoroughly surface-level comprehension of electronics based on casually dismantling a few commercial radios back in my old life. Trying to engineer advanced electronic components—the absolute pinnacle of modern human technology—using the primitive tools currently available in this world was a fundamentally impossible pipe dream.
"Well, I suppose this is the absolute limit of what we can actively organize right now... Speaking of which, where did everyone else go?"
"They are casually relaxing over there."
Ria, who had been quietly listening to our bureaucratic brainstorming session from the sidelines, pointed her finger toward the edge of the clearing.
Turning my head in that direction, my eyes were greeted by the following spectacle:
"Flip the meat already! Flip the meat!!"
"Exactly! More, more! Keep them coming, Tori! My stomach is practically touching my spine over here!!"
"Make sure you eat your vegetables too, Mobu."
"Raiya-san is entirely right, you know. You need to maintain a properly balanced nutritional intake."
Heaven only knows where they had managed to unearth it, but the group had fully set up a commercial barbecue kit and were currently stuffing their faces with grilled meat.
Ah, right—I recall them packing heavy-duty spatial storage bags as a substitute for their standard item boxes before we deployed.
Wait... are they unaffected by magic power depletion?
"How strange... Items made using magic power seem to work normally?"
Zargis had apparently arrived at the exact same intellectual inquiry, tilting his head in confusion.
"Hard to say. It could be that their internal mana reserves simply haven't fully depleted yet, or maybe they can still be taken out even if the magic power is depleted..."
"I see. That is a highly plausible hypothesis."
"Then again, how exactly do standard magic tools on this continent manage to sustain their active functions over long periods of time anyway?"
"There are various ways. Using magic stones from monsters like batteries, or designs that automatically absorb magic power from the air for permanent use..."
"There are lots of methods, huh."
Yeah, this new continent with its magic power depletion problem is full of interesting discoveries.
The data we were harvesting right now would serve as invaluable reference material once we eventually launched our global initiative to educate the nations of our home continent regarding the catastrophic reality of the magical depletion crisis...
"Ugh, just running through the sheer scale of the paperwork is giving me a massive headache... I seriously just want to throw my hands up and walk away from all of this..."
"Please don't. The possibility of creatures composed primarily of mana dying has become frighteningly realistic. As a demon whose body changed according to mana quantity, this isn't someone else's problem."
"Ah, right. That was the whole issue, wasn't it? So, how are you feeling physically?"
"If I had to describe it, it simply feels as though the air is slightly heavy and restrictive to breathe."
"Hmm... any changes to your status?"
"None so far."
"I'd like to believe it's just your imagination..."
"Same here. Please don't let me be unable to get up tomorrow."
"An eternal sleep, huh? In a way, wouldn't that technically qualify as a thoroughly peaceful, painless euthanasia?"
"I have an incredibly strong desire to remain alive."
"I know that. For now, let's eat and prepare for tomorrow."
I joined the group grilling meat in front of me and enjoyed myself.
Man... I've got a lot to think about.
